Saving Kuke village, saving Shashe river

I have just watched a Botswana Television (Btv) program which, in my opinion, can best be described as a horror show. The grizzly show depicts how huge swathes of pristine wilderness around the town of Kuke is being cleared of trees in the name of “commercial” charcoal industry. Our country is semi desert, as we all learnt and hopefully continue to teach our children today. How then can we cut the few trees we have and expose the land to the ravages of wind and other erosive forces?

For those of us who still speak Kalanga, it is clear that the un-corrupted name of the town of Kuke is “ku bgwe”, meaning “at the rock/s”. This is so because travelling by bus on a tarred road from Maun to Ghanzi you see no rock outcrop of any sort whatsoever for close to an hour. The land is flat as far as the eye can see. Then suddenly you see a rocky chain cutting across the road in the distance. The spectacle is breath taking. At the base of the rocky outcrop is the town of Kuke. It takes little imagination to appreciate that the true name of the town is “Ku bgwe”. And so this is the wilderness that is being turned into a wind-swept barren desert by greedy avaricious businessmen with absolutely no moral or scientific compass! Thank you Btv, for airing and thus exposing, this criminal activity. 

Look, we know that our country is in dire economic hardships. We live it daily. But instead of decimating our natural environment we should jealously guard it. That is what environmental impact studies are supposed to safeguard. The kind of environment-changing scandal that is currently taking place in Mathangwane is disheartening. A “Choppies” superstore of some sort is being built on the banks of the Shashe River. We know what that will do to the river; it will kill the river. How could this have been allowed? Why did those Mathangwane people who have only the river as a source of water for their animals and for themselves whenever the water reticulation infrastructure breaks down, not raise a concern? There is huge swathes of land in Mathangwane where Choppies could have been granted permission to build their business without posing danger to the Shashe. I wish to plead with the Minister concerned to please save the Shashe.